Part 3

It was quite evident I had offended her, for she froze into silence. As I left the train at Tandragee she laid her faded glove on my arm and whispered, "It is their duty to be content in their own station, is it not?"

"If they cannot do any better," I whispered back.

"They cannot," said the little old lady sinking back on her seat triumphantly.

It is rather unhandy, that the names of the stations are called out by a person on the platform outside the cars, instead of by a conductor inside.

The manufacturing town of Gilford is a pretty, clean, neat, little place clustered round the mills and the big house, like the old feudal retainers round the castle. Here, as in Belfast, a certain amount of distress must exist, for the mills are not running full time.

The wages of a common operative here is twelve shillings (or three dollars) per week. If they have a family grown up until they are able to work at the mills, of course it adds materially to the income. Girls are more precious than boys, I have heard, as being more docile and easier kept in clothing. They can earn about half wages, or six shillings (one dollar and a half) per week. Rents are about two shillings (or half a dollar) per week. It takes one and sixpence for fuel. A young family would keep the parents busy to make ends meet in the best of times. In case of the mill running short time I should think they would persistently refuse to meet. No signs of distress, not the least were apparent anywhere. The mill hands trooping past looked clean, rosy and cheerful, and were decently clad. The grounds around the factory were beautiful and very nicely kept, and beautiful also were the grounds about the great house. I felt sorry that there were no little garden plots about the tenement houses occupied by the operatives; so when hard times come they will have no potatoes or vegetables of their own to help them to tide over the times of scant wages. How I do wish that the large-hearted and generous proprietors of these works could take this matter into consideration.

People waiting at the station talked among themselves of hard times, of farms that were run down, that would not yield the rent, not to speak of leaving anything for the tenants to live on. There was no complaint made of the landlords; the land was blamed for not producing enough. Of course, these people ought to know, but the fields everywhere looked like garden ground. The only symptoms of running down that I could see were in some of the houses, two-roomed, with leaky-looking roofs and a general air of neglect. I must own, however, that houses of this description were by far the fewest in number. At one station where we stopped, one respectable-looking man asked of another, "Have you got anything to do yet, Robert?" "Still waiting for something to turn up," was the answer. This man was not at all of the Micawber type, but a well-brushed, decent-looking person with a keen peremptory face, evidently of Scottish descent. A group of such men came on the train, whose only talk was of emigrating if they only had the means.

I have heard a great deal of talk of emigration among the people with whom I have travelled since I landed, but have not heard one mention of Canada as a desirable place to emigrate to. The Western States, the prairie lands, seem to be the promised land to everyone. One of these would-be emigrants took a flute out of his pocket and played the Exile of Erin. The talk of emigration stilled and a great silence fell on them all. There were some soldiers on the car, young men, boys in fact, who seemed by the heavy marching order of their get-up to be going to join their regiment. Some of them struggled mannishly with the tears they fain would hide. Truly the Irish are attached to the soil. I could not help wondering if these lads were ordered to foreign service, and on what soil they would lay down their heads to rest forever.

Two persons near by, conversing in low tones on the state of the country, drew my attention to them. One was a sonsie good-wife with any amount of bundles, the other a little old man with a face of almost superhuman wisdom.

"The country will be saved mem, now; when the Coercion Bill has passed the country will be saved," said the old man.

"There's a great deal too much fuss made about everything," remarked the good-wife. "Look at that boy ten years old taken up, bless us all! for whistling at a man."

"Did you take notice, mem, that the whistling was derisive, was derisive, it was derisive. That is where it is, you see," said the old man with a slow, sagacious roll of his head.

"I would not care what a wee boy could put into a whistle: it was awfully childish for a man and a gentleman to take up just a wean for a whistle."

"You see mem, they have to be strict and keep everything down. The Government have ways of finding out things; they know all though, they don't let on. There will be a bloody time, in my opinion."

Oh, the wisdom with which the old man shook his head as he said this, adding in a penetrating whisper, "The times of '98 over again or worse."

IV.

LOYALTY IN THE "BLACK NORTH"--GENTLEMEN'S RESIDENCES--A MODEL IRISH ESTATE--A GOOD MAN AND HIS WIFE--VISITING THE POOR.

Down in the North the loyalty is intense and loud. An opinion favorable to the principles of the Land League it would be hardly prudent to express. Any dissatisfaction with anything at all is seldom expressed for fear of being classed with these troublers of Ireland.

The weather is very inclement, and has been ever since I landed. Snow, rain, hail, sleet, hard frost, mud, have alternated. Some days have been one continuous storm of either snow or sleet.

The roads through Antrim are beautifully clean and neat, not only on the line of rail but along the country roads inland. The land is surely beautiful, exceedingly, and kept like a garden. The number of houses of some, nay of great, pretensions, is most astonishing. Houses set in spacious and well-kept grounds, with porter lodges, terraced lawns, conservatories, &c., abound. They succeed one another so constantly that one wonders how the land is able to bear them all, or by what means such universal grandeur is supported. There is an outcry of want, of very terrible hard times, but certainly the country shows no signs thereof. The great wonder to me is where the laborers who produce all this neatness and beauty live? Where are the small farmers on whom the high rent presses so heavily? Few houses, where such could by any possibility be housed, are to be seen from the roadside. There are so very few cottages and so very many gentlemen's houses that I am forced to believe that the peasantry have almost entirely disappeared. Yet I know there must be laborers somewhere to keep the place so beautiful,

Ballymena, always a bustling place, has spread itself from a thriving little inland town into a large place of some 8,000 inhabitants. Notwithstanding the depression in the linen trade, this town presents a thriving, bustling appearance as it has always done. The number of whiskey shops is something dreadful. The consumption of that article must be steady and enormous to support them. There is squalor enough to be seen in the small streets of this town, but that is in every town.

The public road from Ballymena to Grace Hill passes through the Galgorm estate which passed from the hands of its last lord, through the Encumbered Estates Court, into the hands of its present proprietor. On this estate a most wonderful change has been effected, and in a short space of time to effect so much. During the old regime, and the good old times of absentee landlordism, squalor and misery crept up to the castle gates. The wretchedness of the tenants could be seen by every passer-by. The peasantry tell of unspeakable orgies held at the castle even upon the Sabbath day. The change is something miraculous. The waste pasture-like demesne is reclaimed and planted. The worst cabins have entirely disappeared; the rest are improved till they hardly know themselves.

They match the new cottages for which the proprietor took a prize. These little homes with their climbing plants, their trim little gardens, look as if any one might snuggle down in any of them and be content. The castle itself looks altered; it has lost its grim Norman look, and stands patriarchal and fatherly among the beautiful homes it has created.

Not far from the castle gate is a pretty church and its companion, an equally pretty building for the National School. I enquired of several how this great improvement came about; the answer was always the same, "The estate passed into the hands of a good man who lived on it, and he had a godly wife." Passing the pretty little church I heard the sound of children's voices singing psalms, and was told that the daughter of the castle was teaching the children to sing; I noticed In Memoriam on a stone in the building, and found that this church was built in memory of the good lady of the castle, who has departed to a grander inheritance, leaving a name that lingers like a blessing in the country side. So the old landlord's loss of an estate has been great gain to this people.

It is in the country parts, more remote from the public eye, that one sees the destitution wrought by the depression in the linen trade. People there are struggling with all their might to live and keep out of the workhouses. Hand-loom weaving seems doomed to follow hand-spinning and become a thing of the past. Weavers some time ago had a plot of ground which brought potatoes and kale to supplement the loom, and on it could earn twelve shillings a week. But alas! while the webs grew longer the price grew less and they are in a sad case.

I called, with a friend, on some of these weavers: one, an intelligent man, with the prevailing Scotch type of face. We found him, accompanied by a sickly wife, sitting by a scanty fire, ragged enough. This man for his last web was paid at the rate of twopence a yard for weaving linen with twenty hundred threads to the inch, but out of this money he had to buy dressing and light, and have some one, the sickly wife I suppose, to wind the bobbins for him. He must then pay rent for the poor cabin he lived in, none too good for a stable, and supply all his wants on the remainder.

Another weaver told me that all this dreary winter they had no bed- clothes. They think by combining together they will be able to obtain better prices; but they are so poor, the depression in the trade is such a fearful reality that I am afraid they cannot combine or co-operate to any purpose. However, people in such desperate circumstances grasp at any hope.

It is wonderful with what disfavor some of these people receive a hint of emigration. It seems like transportation to them. Truly these Irish do cling to the soil.